Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-150). / Rapid prototyping has been in the limelight for the past decade. 3D printers have an evocative name that promises production of complex parts on demand. Yet current practice doesn't quite deliver on these promises of advanced manufacturing. Existing digital fabrication tools enable repeatability and precision by using codes to describe machine actions. But the infrastructure used for digital fabrication machines is difficult to extend, modify, and customize. It is very difficult for the end-user to incorporate more forms of control into the workflow. Machine design today is largely the same as it was 50 years ago, despite decades of progress in other fields such as computer science and network engineering. I argue that we need to transition from rapid prototyping to rapid prototyping of rapid prototyping. To make diverse goods, we need diverse tools. To develop diversity in digital fabrication tools, we need reconfigurable and extensible infrastructure for machine building. Using insights from object-oriented programming, end-to-end principles in network design, and the open system interconnection model, I propose a new paradigm for machine building called object-oriented hardware. In this paradigm, software objects and hardware objects are peers that have procedures, methods, ports, and presentations. Machine building modules are available as software libraries are to programmers. A machine instantiation is an assembly of objects situated in a particular context. Using this approach, a thing together with the machine that makes it becomes an application. This method transcends the additive versus subtractive manufacturing comparisons by considering both types of rapid automation. Development work is divided into infrastructural engineering, which develop modules for use in any machine, and application development, which develop specific machine instantiations. Here I present technical implementations of machine building infrastructure first. These include distributed networked controls, reconfigurable software interfaces, and modular mechanical machine components. Then I present machine instantiations that use this infrastructure to demonstrate its capability. Finally to evaluate the object-oriented hardware paradigm in the wild, I observe machine building novices using these tools in both a workshop format and in the Fab Lab network for machine building. To make the modular components for machine building accessible in this context, I developed an extensible toolkit for machine building-the Cardboard Machine Kit. Using this toolkit, novices were able to make a wide range of machines, demonstrating the power of this method. / by Nadya Peek. / Ph. D.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / The police are designed. Their tools, policies, and human services are all products of deliberation and choice, and therefore open to consideration and re-consideration in an era that has seen widespread abuse of power. This thesis takes up one element of the designed police system in the United States: its material culture-from vehicles, to uniforms and badges, to weapons. The physical tools and devices that the police force use are emblematic of explicit and implicit values. These values make certain conditions and encounters possible, and other scenarios impossible. What is behind these tools, and how might our culture see them anew? How might we re-imagine them in the civic act of designing a future? Oversight, transparency, and accountability are a critical piece of the civic fabric. In order for law enforcement to reflect the needs and expectations of citizens, it is in part, our responsibility to interrogate the designs of the key institutions we rely on. But agency in the design space of the police has not been encouraged. This thesis presents one example of how a dialogue around design is a form of productive civic activity and a check against state violence. In it, I offer a complementary set of tools for imagining possible futures of policing that reconsider scenarios for law enforcement, with a provisional freedom from its current form. Problematizing the physical designs of the police, it focuses on the values, priorities, and politics that are inevitably imbued in these objects. This practice-led research draws from interviews with both citizens and law enforcement, design research, and participatory, critical making. It makes a case for citizen engagement and civic imagination in the proactive design of the police. This speculative design approach fosters understanding and agency, and suggests one way in which the design of the police could be a more inclusive and collaborative project. / by Sands A. Fish, II. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [176]-185). / The main research question of this thesis is the following: What is the relationship between spaces and innovation in the context of design organizations such as IDEO, the MIT Media Lab and Design Continuum? This thesis explores the relationship between four types of spaces, namely, 1) urban, 2) building 3) workplace and 4) users and innovation and creative practices of these three case studies. Drawing mainly on visual ethnography, the thesis shows how the four organizations' situated spaces-in-use shape their innovation, learning and knowledge sharing practices. The findings are used to complement and expand existing theories, to reflect on the "spacing" of the three design organizations under study and to contribute to the outline of this interdisciplinary emerging field of research. / by Cristobal Garcia Herrera. / S.M.

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Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 46-47). / Cities and spaces are often examined with a focus on amenities or attributes that can be quantified or explained through patterns and movements by people. There are even numerous apps and services (Yelp, FourSquare, Google Maps to name a few) that provide platforms for adults to express their subjective feelings and opinions about restaurants, bars, landmarks, and public places, but as researchers have shown', these apps don't quite capture the full picture of meaningful places or spaces for people. Consequently, urban planners and architects designing cities take a specific, commercial viewpoint into perspective, with a bias towards the response of professional adults. As adults are not the only population living in cities, it is important and interesting to understand how people of different ages and socioeconomic classes-children, teenagers, and adults-and with different goals-learning, having fun, working-perceive the city and spaces around them in contrast or similarly to each other. This thesis uses Kendall and Harvard Squares to explore methodologies intended to capture the subjective perspectives and impressions of the city by children and adults alike. Specifically, methodologies that could elicit responses about perception relating to memory, culture, state of mind, and social interactions were explored. Participants were given a series of descriptive words and were asked to record an image in the Square that matched the word. They were also asked to express their impressions of places with their own words and playfulness. The results of the methodologies helped to form potential larger scale studies that would provide a deeper view of how a wider cross-section of the population perceive the city in terms of spaces they find creative, inspirational, and playful. Ultimately, this research seeks to understand the intangible qualitative perception of people in spaces and cities. / by Laya Anasu. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 99-101). / Currently, many introductory coding activities for children focus on engaging them in solving puzzles. This thesis explores a different approach to introducing coding that engages children in creating projects based on their interests. I present the iterative design and testing of Scratch Microworlds, simplified versions of the Scratch coding environment that contain a small set of blocks for making projects based on a theme, such as dance, soccer, or music. I use a design-based research approach to iteratively design, implement and evaluate Scratch Microworlds. The design of Scratch Microworlds is guided by three questions: (1) how to simplify initial experiences while still supporting creativity, (2) how to provide scaffolding while maintaining learners' agency, and (3) how to provide starting points that spark rather than limit the imagination. This thesis describes the design process, and analyzes the results of user-testing with children and educators. It concludes with a set of guidelines for the design of newcomer experiences into coding that support children as creative thinkers, informed by constructionist learning theory. / by Moran Tsur. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 94-99). / Zeki Müren is Turkey's beloved queer pop star whose career spans a period between his first radio emission in 1951 and his death during a live television program in 1996. He is a pioneer of 'Turkish Art Music', a trailblazer in utilizing novel mass communication tools, a proud nationalist who donated half of his estate to Military Veterans Organization, and an LGBTQ solidarity symbol whose gender-bending image has been an inspiration to queer individuals in Turkey. Müren's artistic production and his star image contain multiplicity of meanings that have rendered him accessible to publics from various backgrounds, subcultures, and generations. This thesis examines Zeki Müren as a media text that is scattered across music (radio and records), cinema, gazino nightclub performances, and television, during his lifetime, and deconstructed and appropriated by fans, artists, musicians, and media makers after his death. Based on their ideological and representational affordances, these media together create a polysemy - multiple meanings that Müren's star image signifies - whose elements are often in tension with each other, while providing different entry points for different audiences. With the guidance of Richard Dyer's work on intertextuality and structured polysemy of star images, and Henry Jenkin's theory of transmedia storytelling, this research follows the traces of Müren's transformation from his radio days, to cinema, gazino, and television performances, while situating these textual analyses within Turkey's political, media, and LGBTQ histories. In addition, two media components in-production - a feature-length film 'A Prince from Outer Space: Zeki Müren' and a participatory and interactive documentary 'Zeki Müren Hotline' are interwoven into this intertextual and cross-generational conversation, emphasizing the generative polysemy of Müren's star image. / by Beyza Boyacioglu. / S.M.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-155). / Computation is a powerful medium for art creation. Procedural art, or artwork defined by a computationally represented system of rules, relationships, and behaviors, enables creation of works that are flexible, adaptable, and capable of systematic revision. Yet the medium for creating procedural art, computer programming, can pose significant barriers for manual artists. Programming can be challenging to learn, and programming tools can restrict the concrete practices of manual art. An analysis of the creative opportunities of procedural art and the conflicts programming poses for manual artists raises these questions: (1) How can we create procedural art systems that are accessible and expressive for manual artists? (2) How can we support different ways of thinking and creating with representational mediums? (3) How can procedural art systems contribute to the process of learning and understanding representational mediums? This dissertation explores these questions through two new systems that integrate manual and procedural creation. Para is a digital illustration tool that enables artists to produce procedural compositions through direct manipulation. Dynamic Brushes is a system that enables artists to create computational drawing tools that procedurally augment the process of manual drawing. Para and Dynamic Brushes were informed through interviews with artists and evaluated through multi-week open-ended studies in which professionals created polished artwork. These evaluations provided a framework for developing creative tools through extended work with creative professionals. Comparison of artwork produced with Para and Dynamic Brushes revealed specific trade-offs in expressiveness, ease of entry, and working style for direct manipulation and representational procedural tools. Overall, this research demonstrates how integrating manual and procedural creation can diversify the kinds of outcomes people can create with procedural tools and the kinds of people who can participate in procedural art. / by Jennifer Jacobs. / Ph. D.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 53-55). / The development of fluorescence in situ nucleic acid sequencing (FISSEQ) will permit investigators to answer scientific questions in which the spatial context of gene expression rather than just identity and abundance - must be taken into account; recent progress in biological sample engineering, including physical expansion of tissue (i.e. Expansion Microscopy), will radically empower this technology (ExSEQ). However, in situ sequencing is technically difficult to implement, requiring an investigator to be familiar with a wide variety of techniques in molecular biology, microfluidics, fluorescence microscopy, image processing, and bioinformatics, and improvements are still needed before it is widely practicable. In this work, we investigate the use of sequencing by synthesis - as opposed to the currently practiced method of sequencing by ligation - in order to realize improvements in usability and performance. We demonstrate the viability of sequencing by synthesis reactions in situ, characterize their performance, and describe a route from demonstration to practice. / by Andrew C. Payne. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "Some pages in the original document contain text that runs off the edge of the page"--Disclaimer Notice page. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 117-120). / AUFLIP describes an auditory feedback system approach for learning advanced movements, informed and motivated by established methods of implicit motor learning by analogy, our physiological constraints, and the state of the art in augmented motor learning by feedback. AUFLIP presents and validates a physics simplification of an advanced movement, the front flip, and details the implementation of a wearable system, optimized placement procedure, and takeoff capture strategy to realizes this model. With an audio cue pattern that conveys this high level objective, the system is integrated into a gymnastics training environment with professional coaches teaching novice adults how to perform front flips. A strategy, system, and application set building off AUFLIP for more general movement, and applications is further proposed. Lastly, this work performs a preliminary investigatation into the notion of Audio-Movement Congruence, and whether audio feedback for motor learning can be personally tailored to individuals' contextual experiences and background, and explores future applications of the discussed systems and strategies. / by Daniel Visan Levine. / S.M.